Rwanda

The blame game

Exchanging unpleasantries about the genocide

DID France expect—and indeed help—the genocide that killed almost a million people in Rwanda 14 years ago? That is the claim made in a 500-page report published in Rwanda this week, accusing 33 French politicians and army officers, including France's then-president, François Mitterrand, of complicity. But the report must be read with a pinch of salt. It is in part the product of a feud between the two countries.

The report was commissioned by Paul Kagame, Rwanda's president. Some will say it is a response to a French judge's indictment of nine of Mr Kagame's allies over the plane crash that killed his predecessor, Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death triggered the start of the massacres. But it is also part of a broader effort by Mr Kagame's government to entrench its own narrative of the 100-day killing spree and refute revisionist histories that minimise the killings or, in some cases, deny that any genocide took place.

Most historians accept that Hutu extremists from Rwanda's majority ethnic group organised the murder of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus with the backing of the former regime. Mr Kagame's rebel Tutsi army toppled that regime and brought the killing to an end. Much of his government's legitimacy derives from that achievement. One Western diplomat in Kigali, Rwanda's capital, says that is why it is determined to document its version of events and fix it in the public mind. Mr Kagame argues that the genocide arose from the prevalence of a “genocide ideology”, and accuses those who distort the history of peddling the same ideology.

By indicting Mr Kagame's allies over the plane crash that killed Habyarimana, the French judge, however, seemed to endorse a shocking claim by the genocide's revisionist historians. This holds that Tutsi rebels shot down the aircraft deliberately to provoke massacres by Hutu extremists, which would in turn give Mr Kagame's rebels an excuse to attack Kigali. The claim incenses Mr Kagame, who has long criticised France's ties to the former Hutu-dominated regime. That may explain the counter-allegation in this week's report that France knew genocide was likely and helped it to happen. The French call these accusations “unacceptable”.

The history of the massacre remains tangled in controversy. Another claim is of a “double genocide”. This is based on accusations that Mr Kagame's own forces committed atrocities during and after the genocide. Independent analysts view any implication of equivalence as preposterous, but the arguments, and the pain, will surely continue.